by Rachel Hauck
JONAS
The August morning promised to be hot. But the collective breeze off the river and the Atlantic gave him hope.
Standing on his patio, watching the sunrise, he found his thoughts drifting to Tenley. He missed her. She’d texted of her success with Elijah Phipps and the foundation.
They’d not talked much since, but the way she had stepped out to right a wrong challenged him.
He’d played it safe with his heart far too long. He called Mason last night to see how things were going. Genuinely smiled when the man said his shop was booming and Cindy was pregnant.
Did the man apologize? Nope. But Jonas forgave, and when he did, confidence surged. Clearly his designs were working. He had talent and the confidence to venture out on his own.
Tenley asked him to check on Grove Manor. Seeing the desk in the library, he wondered about restoring it. But something about its appearance, the worn places from an old typewriter and from where arms rested, told him the desk was in its perfect condition.
Tenley had returned his thousand dollars, so technically the desk wasn’t his. It was hers. And exactly where it belonged.
For one wild moment, he considered driving it to New York, then decided not to go there. Emotionally or literally.
But today? He had a long Saturday ahead, crafting tables and chairs.
He was about to go inside when Dad came through the house, shoving through the sliding doors, waving a check.
“Second installment.”
“Dad, come on, I told you not to worry about paying me back.” Jonas squeezed past him for the kitchen, dumping the last of his coffee in the sink.
“Your mother and I insist. Her boss gave her a bonus and we paid off a few more bills. We’re catching up.”
“God has taken care of me. The restaurant job came at the right time.”
“Please, son . . .” Dad set the check on the counter with a quick pat, and Jonas saw the need in his eyes to pay back what he owed. To have the dignity and respect of not being beholden.
“Then thanks.”
“Heard from Tenley lately?”
“Did Mom put you up to asking?”
“No. Okay, maybe. We both like her. She fits into the family.”
“Not going to happen. We’re from two different worlds.”
“Ever stop to think her world needs yours and vice versa?”
“My world doesn’t need hers.” Jonas washed out his mug and put it in the drainer. “She doesn’t need mine.”
“Okay, let’s get to the real issue. Hearts. Her heart needs yours. You need hers.”
Jonas headed for the workshop, Dad following, crossing to his door. “I’m not sure I trust her. She stole another author’s work. Tried to present it as her own.”
“But she took responsibility. She’s paid for her sin. Don’t you think she deserves some compassion? A second chance? If you’re to be like Christ, and He can forgive you . . .”
“I forgive her. I just don’t know if I want to trust her with my heart.”
“Well, you can’t make that decision from all the way back here. Got to get up close.”
Jonas laughed, sliding open the shop door, clicking on the lights and overhead fans. “I can see fine from here.”
“What if you had nothing but your career? Estranged from Mom. I was dead. You were an only child. What if you had great success on a furniture design and then . . . nothing.”
“I wouldn’t steal another designer’s work if that’s what you’re asking. Even if I didn’t know whose it was.”
Dad walked over to the workbench, admiring the second set of tables Jonas was finishing. “Just wondering if you’re splitting hairs to push her away ’cause you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared.” Jonas slipped on his goggles and gloves. “Just cautious.”
“Cautious and scared often look a lot alike.” Dad slapped him gently in the gut. “Remember when the sheriff came and put us out of the house?”
Jonas collected his tools and geared up for the work. “Kind of hard to forget.”
“I was scared.”
Jonas peeked over at his dad. “I don’t remember feeling you were.”
“Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t eat. What had I done to my family? The boy twins were babies, the E’s young enough to be innocent but old enough to notice things.”
“We survived, Dad. And we’re the closer for it.”
“Your mom kept telling me to reach out for help, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. What kind of man can’t support his family?”
“Dad, a lot of men find themselves out of a job or caught in debt.”
“But I was a hard worker. How did I get there? One evening to get out of the cars, we took a walk downtown, remember?”
“The E’s cried for ice cream all the way home.”
“It broke me. I couldn’t buy my kids an ice-cream cone because I was too prideful to ask for help. I asked the next day. Turns out there was a family looking for a renter. Another man in the church knew of a job. We spent a week in the cars when we could’ve had a nice home and a job because I was looking at the world through my pride. Don’t miss out on this girl because you’re looking through your pride, or hurt, or past experience, I don’t know what, but you do. Figure it out.”
“Look, even if I did figure it out and go after her, she doesn’t want me, Dad. So we’re even.”
“My eyes tell me she loves you.”
“Well, Mom’s been saying for years you need new glasses.”
With a chuckle, Dad headed for the door. “I’ve got to get to work, but Joe, no man ever hit one out of the park by keeping his bat on his shoulder.”
Dad and his fatherly baseball metaphors. Jonas brooded as he started to work.
Now Tenley was on his mind. On his heart. He couldn’t concentrate, so he yanked off his gloves and sent her a text.
How are you?
He waited. When she didn’t text back, he poured a second cup of coffee and went back to work. He was just about to fire up the jigsaw when his phone pinged.
Okay. How are you?
Good. Building tables.
Yay!
How’s New York?
It doesn’t have a beach.
That’s OK, we don’t have Broadway.
Elijah and I met with Barclay. They didn’t know Birdie wrote Gordon’s books. They were shocked. I’m working on getting An October Wedding published with her name on it. We think it will be a Gordon Phipps Roth novel by Birdie Ainsworth.
Wow. I’m proud. Not your name?
Nope! ;)
He missed her. So much his heart ached.
Been reading Birdie’s Bible. Starting to understand some stuff. Ha! #thickheadsoftens
His pulse raced, connecting his head and his heart. A small idea developed. He typed his next message, hesitated, then pressed Send.
What’s your address again? Need it for my contacts. 1214 5th Avenue, Apt 11, Manhattan 10029 Thanks.
Closing up the workshop, he decided Dad was right. If he wanted to make a decision about Tenley, he had to get up close.
FORTY-ONE
TENLEY
She paced the length of her empty apartment, phone to her ear, listening to Charlie. A skilled, sharp agent, he took forever to get to the point. She wanted to end his sentences for him.
“. . . so I had lunch with an editor over at . . .”
Tenley sat in the rickety lawn chair she had found by a Dumpster. After disinfecting it with a Clorox shower, she deemed the apartment worthy.
Otherwise, the place was empty. She’d arranged for Saget to take away everything but Dad’s chair, Grandpa’s old dresser, and her clothes.
The rest she sent away with her past. With Holt. With writer’s block. With her failures. She was starting over. She had a new faith and fresh hope. Time to rebuild from there.
She’d repaid her advance to Barclay and restored some of her relationship with them.
They refused her
plans for An October Wedding, but with Elijah on her side, Wendall returned the book to her, forgoing the option to publish.
“We want to protect Phipps Roth’s and Barclay’s reputations.”
So she asked Charlie to shop Birdie’s manuscript.
Royalties from Someone to Love sales along with Dad’s earnings would keep her until she figured out what to do with her life.
But she’d been dreaming of writing again. Stories popped into her head all day. Her writer’s block was broken.
Of course, she was no longer in command of her life. There was a new leader aboard. Jesus.
For fun, yeah, she signed up for beauty school. Maybe, just maybe, she’d find a glorious story in the process of making women beautiful.
“Charlie?” she said.
“—and I told him . . . What?”
“Did you sell the book or not?”
“I sold the book. To Daisy Jackson Publishing.”
She put her forehead to her hand. Done. Justice. “Thank you.”
Charlie rattled off details. “They’re a small press but they loved the book. The team is young and hip, savvy on social media. They made a good offer. But Tenley, they don’t want to touch Gordon Phipps Roth’s name, so I sold them on you. They are big fans. The release date is early next year. An October Wedding by Birdie Ainsworth. Presented by Tenley Roth.
The moment was worthy of tears.
“They want a meeting. We can set one up later in the week.”
“This means the world to me. Really, Charlie.”
“Here’s what I’m thinking . . .”
A knock hit the door. Still listening, Tenley rose to answer. Saget stood in the hall with a couple of men carrying a piece of furniture under a moving blanket.
“Charlie, hold on. Saget, we’re taking furniture out, not bringing it in.”
“The man said it was a delivery for you.” The doorman shoved past her. “Where do you want it?”
“What is it?”
Saget removed the moving blanket. “A desk.”
The men set the piece in the middle of the living room right where the sunlight spilled through the window. Her desk! Birdie’s desk. With all of its glorious nicks and worn edges.
“Jonas!” She ran to the door. “Where is he?”
“Who?” Saget and his men stood around the desk. “Look, is this where you want it? These guys get paid by the second.”
“Yeah, it’s fine. Where is the man who sent up the desk?”
“In the lobby.”
She mashed the elevator button a hundred times. “Come on, come on.” Then pulled the twenty she was going to use for lunch from her pocket and smashed it into Saget’s hand. “The tip.”
She was just about to dash for the stairs when the elevator arrived. The doors opened to reveal Jonas standing alone in the car.
Tenley flew into his arms, wrapping herself around him as he caught her, gripping her tight.
“You’re here.”
“If you don’t mind, we’ll wait for the next elevator,” Saget said, reaching in and pushing the close-door button.
“I’m here. I never should’ve let you go.” He fell against the elevator wall as she kissed him over and over.
“I love you, Jonas. I do, I just do.”
“Oh, I love you too, babe. I don’t care about the manuscript. I just want you.”
His lips covered hers and her heart stilled. Quieter than it had ever been. He turned her against the wall as they rode down to the lobby with his hands on her waist, his kiss going beyond her lips to the core of her being.
She drank him in, each movement slaking the thirst she never knew existed. Every other love, every other kiss had been a prelude to this one.
In Jonas’s arms, she was no longer lost. But found.
“You’re going to marry me one day, right? Really soon,” she said.
“Oh, absolutely. You’d better believe it.”
BIRDIE
APRIL 1968
She faced the shoreline, the wind and the waves, missing England. Missing Eli, gone five years on this very day. She reflected on her life.
Behind her, Grove Manor cast a long shadow over the beach. Lately, she’d begun to feel the hollow echo of the place, rattling around alone, hosting afternoon tea, trying her hand at knitting, sewing, and even painting.
Once in a while she thought of writing again, but when Gordon died, her creative river suddenly stopped.
She felt full, satisfied with her body of work. Starting over under her own name seemed more daunting than hiding her secret.
Besides, she feared her own publication might somehow expose Gordon. Or worse, bring accusations of plagiarism down on her. She shivered, the echo of that long-ago day in Barclay’s office still with her.
She lived well with her inheritance and book earnings. The wind whistling over the beach put her in mind of her song. How it comforted her. Even now.
Do not be dismayed, you don’t have to worry or be afraid.
How true those words had been of her life. Turning back for the house, the evening sunset lighting her path, she climbed the stairs for the library. Her old typewriter perched on its well-worn grooves, waiting for her to type again. But her story had been told.
“Birdie, are you here?” The front screen door slammed, and her friend and Realtor Marian Grace arrived with the family interested in buying the house.
“On my way.”
Birdie reached for the typewriter cover and settled it over the machine, pausing for a silent moment. Right here at this desk, the girl in the carriage had lived a most wondrous life.
Good night, old friend. Good night.
EPILOGUE
The brim of her wide beach hat shaded the pad of paper resting on her beach towel. Lying on her belly with Jonas’s leg intertwined with hers, Tenley dreamed up a new story.
“Know what I love about today?” Jonas said, sleepy and low, in a way that made her tingle.
“That it’s Saturday?”
“Nope. That I’m married to you.”
She leaned over to kiss him, his eyes closed and his tanned skin glistening. “You’re married to me every day.”
Eight months ago . . . Was it eight or nine? She always lost track with Jonas. One happy day blended with the next.
Anyway, they tied the knot on the beach behind Grove Manor, sixish months after Jonas formally proposed in New York.
Tenley gave up New York and the idea of beauty school and moved to Cocoa Beach, where Jonas and the Sullivans taught her how to live in a family, large and messy with an array of personalities, and how to love well.
One of the E’s asked her on their wedding day, “Is Jonas your Ezra?”
With tears Tenley nodded. “Very much so.”
Birdie Percy, Marchioness of Ainsworth, became a published author last year, 113 years after The Girl in the Carriage was published with Gordon Phipps Roth’s name.
Charlie, the slick agent he was, got the rest of the story from Wendall. Turned out he’d inherited his great-great-grandfather’s diary, and the account of The Girl in the Carriage was detailed there. Daniel Barclay wasn’t any more proud of himself than Phipps Roth for publishing a stolen manuscript. He just never did anything about it.
The release of An October Wedding started slow, but as Tenley hit the promotional trail, the book picked up momentum and hit the bestseller lists.
She sat on talk show sets and regaled the audiences with tales of Lady Ainsworth, an American Gilded Age heiress.
She’d found her holy grail—to do something so worthwhile for another. Even posthumously.
Biographies were being written about the Shehorns and Percys. Next week Tenley would fly to New York to be a part of a documentary. Movie talk arose from Hollywood.
“Hey.” She tapped her sleeping husband on the shoulder. “Did you mark on your calendar the premiere of Someone to Love?”
“December 7. Got it. Three months to figure out how to get out of w
earing a tux.”
“Give it up. You’re wearing one.”
He rolled over, pressing his hand along her back, then recoiled, laughing. “You’re sweaty.”
“You don’t say?”
Jonas’s business took off after the owner of the restaurant showed off his designs to his friends. He’d built pieces for restaurants and hotels in the Bahamas, Miami, and Dallas, with new clients calling every day.
And, surprise, she was a churchgoer. Grandpa would be proud. Little by little, Sunday morning was becoming her favorite time of the week. A time to just be and to absorb the worship, the prayers, and the insights of the Word.
God was cool.
“Hey.” Jonas sat up, taking her hat from her head, setting it on his own. “Want to go inside? Work on that baby we’ve been talking about?”
Tenley grinned, gathered her notebook and towel, and slipped her hand into Jonas’s as they walked up the path to Grove Manor.
She never imagined how her life would change when she said yes to Blanche, choosing Cocoa Beach over Paris. A decision that in the moment made no sense.
How a dull old desk with a stuck drawer would open doors she never imagined.
This was a season of triumph. Not as an acclaimed, bestselling, award-winning author but as a wife, a lover, a daughter, and a friend to Birdie Percy.
Birdie and her desk . . . Well, she finally had her book. And Tenley finally had her home. And this was just the beginning.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Let’s see . . . where to begin. A book is mostly written in solitude but rarely in a vacuum. So many people come alongside an author during the writing process. It’s hard to remember everyone.
There are the usual suspects . . . Susan May Warren, the bees-knees of writing partners. She’s a brilliant author, teacher, coach, and friend. Her help in the crafting of the story was invaluable.
Beth Vogt, another stellar author and friend, my FaceTime partner. She helped with the nitty-gritty of this book when I wasn’t sure quite what to do.
